This will be an easy week since I don't have to plan for Friday or Saturday (we're going to Ohio and birding, and I'll have to let you know exactly how that goes) and then Sunday is Mother's Day, so we'll eat out. And of course I don't want to leave leftovers in the refrigerator when I leave town, so Wednesday and Thursday are going to be simple days, too. I love this week!
Monday — "Really Good" Noodles and Chicken. Sara at Simply Sara had this recipe on her menu a few weeks ago and it looked good, so I'm going to try a new recipe this week. Get ready, boys!
Let me just start by saying that anyone who has to do a serious clean-up and organization of any closet less than six months after moving into a house is in need of help, especially if they claim to be a normally organized person. Yes, you can just read me into that sentence.
Of course, there would seem to be a very good reason for some of this disorganization. In our house it has a name.
Baseball Cards.
There were two things I was looking forward to when we finally moved into a nice, big house. One was not having anything under my beds, because I didn't want anything there and for the last 20+ years I've had to store things there for lack of other places to put things.
Two was not having baseball cards in my master bedroom closet. Now it might have been a good idea to share this with Hubby, but then I would have gotten the, "Then where do you propose I put them," comment. And at the time I hadn't put much thought into it.
But when we started carrying things in the house and Hubby handed off a box of cards to Sparky and said, "Take these to my closet," I physically cringed. What was I to do? Because while we have a nice, big house, we don't have an excess of closet storage. Yes, we have a basement, but it's not finished, and it's not really ideal for baseball card storage. Neither is the garage.
So if I wanted them out of my closet, I had to find a place for them. Enter The Organizing Junkie's closet round-up and Hubby gone out of town for a week, and I was in business.
Here are the before pictures of my closet, and I'll admit right up front that it's not just the baseball cards.
Since I invaded another closet in this re-do, I'll go ahead and show you before pictures of it too. It's a closet that is in our rec room, a room basically the size of our three-car garage that it is built over. It has a wire hanging closet shelf that the builder put in. I've used it primarily for toy tub storage.
The first thing I did was move the blue tubs down to the basement, then I stacked the four clear tubs on top of each other. I had some stackable shelving that's made for shoes from our old military quarters that we'd been storing in the garage and not using. We'd actually used it to store Buddy's baseball card books on their sides when we lived in Virginia, but we weren't using them now. I pulled them up into the left side of this rec room closet for the majority of Hubby's larger baseball card boxes, and then put some of the odds and ends on the top along with the statuesque little men.
I stacked the vaults, which are longer, in the open floor space between the shelves and the plastic bins on the right side.
After I moved out all the baseball cards, except for two vaults I left on the top shelf, I was able to clean out and organize the rest of my closet. I did not empty the closet out like The Organizing Junkie suggested, but remember I had lived here less than six months!
Here are pictures of the finished master bedroom closet:
In the picture above, that's my clothes hamper you see in the far left tucked under my short clothes, and then my little (Ikea) step stool since I'm a shorty. My white duvet cover with my winter weight (Ikea!) duvet are stored up on the top shelf.
In the picture below, you can see my upstairs tool box down on the floor where all those baseball cards used to live (plus some empty space!).
The cubbies on the wire rack basically serve as linen closet storage for shampoos, soaps, and hygiene items. Um, because there is no linen closet. You probably already saw my towels up on the shelf in the first picture.
If you close the door, here is where my purse stash is located.
I'm saving up for an Elfa closet system, like maybe in a year or two. But for now, it's clean and I can walk in without stepping on anything, and I like that a lot.
And the fact that the baseball cards aren't in there make me so happy I can't even find the words to adequately express it. The fact that Hubby has been back in town for about four hours and hasn't noticed doesn't bode well. I guess when he reads the post he'll know.
Because aren't these just the cutest things you've ever seen?
With their momma...
And the irony of this sign is not lost on me, having seen it completely iced over just a few months ago.
Here's the proud daddy keeping watch.
gosling: noun 1 a young goose 2 a foolish or callow person
I was snapping pictures of definition number 1, while people driving by and the parental geese thought they were looking at definition number 2, or at least a crazy person.
But those geese needed redemption after my last encounter, and their cute little peeps were just the way.
Notice that spring is springing in the background!
I seem to be going for the every other week theme right now. Not necessarily a good thing.
From memory:
Deuteronomy 6:4-8 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.
This was supposed to include verse 9, but when I sat down to type it out I went blank. Not quite completely. I knew the verse had to do with doorposts (it was doorframes) and gates, but the actual verse was completely gone from my mind. So I get to do it again next week with verse 9.
Verse 8 got me thinking a little bit, because I always focused on verse 9, the one I couldn't remember, and the commandments of the Lord being there as you walk out to remind you before you face the world. But binding them on your forehead — exactly how was that supposed to work?
First I used John MacArthur's Bible Commentary (the one for the entire Bible) and looked up these verses. He said that that the Israelites were to continually meditate on and be led by God's commandments, but that later in Jewish history that this phrase was mistakenly taken literally and that the people tied phylacteries to their hands and foreheads with leather straps. These phylacteries are little boxes containing these verses, and are also called tefillin, or putting on teffillin (thanks, Wikipedia).
When I looked up phylacteries on the internet and found some information on various sites, including Wikipedia, there were a few pictures, which was really what I was interested in. Because I'm curious that way and wanted to know what it looked like to wear it on your forehead. Here are what the phylacteries look like
and here is what they look like being worn, on the forehead and on the arm.
There were rules and such about wearing them, and I'm also curious enough to find it interesting to read about that stuff. If you are, you can just google phylacteries.
For more Memory Monday stuff, join Joanne at The Simple Wife.
I'm not even putting fish on my menu again, because I don't think it's ever going to get made. Ever! I mean, what's it been? Five weeks? That's all I'm going to say about that.
This week Hubby is out of town. He won't be back until late Friday night, which means he'll only be here for what I cook on Saturday. When he was out of town a couple of weeks ago I didn't menu plan, and boy, was that a mistake. We were in a dither.
So this time I'm planning, and I'm planning simple. Because it makes the kids happy, it makes me happy, and we have baseball practice Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night. Assuming we have no snow.
Okay, seriously I don't think we'll get anymore snow, but maybe rain. Oh, and at the same time as Wednesday ball practice, church. Figure that one out and I'll fix you dinner, too.
Monday — Clean out the fridge and pantry night. Wow, two weeks in a row. This is kind of fun.
I fully intended to put this at the end of my post about my grandpa, but it just got too long. I didn't want to take away from that post, but I also didn't want anyone to possibly miss out on this story either, so I split them up. They were related in that my grandpa served in WWII and was part of the Dachau liberation, and this story has to do with the Holocaust, particularly in Poland.
Now I've taught my kids a lot of history from this time period, and in doing so I learned more than I ever did in school myself. It's difficult for me not to tear up whenever I am teaching this subject, but my kids already know I can be a crier. But it just breaks my heart, and I don't really mince too many words when I tell my kids about it, because I don't want them to look past the importance of that time and the sacrifices that so many people made.
As long as I can remember knowing about the Holocaust, I also remember Anne Frank and Corrie Ten Boom. When I was 13 years old (and I know that because I associate things, and I was wearing my full leg splint following my knee surgery from chipping my bone), my church showed The Hiding Place one night in the sanctuary. We sat on the right side, and if you walked straight out the door and a few steps forward you would go into the library. Eventually that night I had to leave the santuary and go sit in the library, because I simply couldn't handle the movie. It was just too sad and crushing and emotional for me, and to this day I have movie clips stuck in my head from 30 years ago.
I have no doubt that there were many, many people who were heroes during that time who were lost with little or no recognition. Would we have known as much about Corrie Ten Boom if she hadn't survived? Probably not. But what a witness she was all those years after the war, too.
That said, Hubby sent me a news clip a few weeks ago. I've been hanging on to it, like I said planning to associate it with the post about my grandpa, but not being able to work it in yesterday. I don't for a minute want to miss sharing it with you, because this story is about an amazing lady and what she did during the Holocaust in Poland, specifically in the Warsaw Ghetto.
I continue to be amazed by The Greatest Generation that stood for right in the face of wrong no matter what the cost.
Today would be my maternal grandfather's 96th birthday if he was still living. He passed away one day after his 91st birthday in 2004. He had been in the hospital a week and passed peacefully.
My husband and my grandfather were very close. They had sports in common, and they had U.S. Army service in common. My grandfather was drafted and served in World War II. Hubby had him pin on his Captains bars when he was promoted, and Grandpa would come to any event that was pre-planned when we lived in Missouri (it was within driving distance).
Hubby went to Kuwait in August of 2003, and he had come home for his R&R at the end of March, 2004. My right arm paralyzed completely and suddenly around the end of February (yes, I know the exact date!), and he was going through the process of trying to stay stateside for my medical situation. My mom had already spent four complete weeks with me and the kids to help.
Hubby's command in Kuwait released him, and his branch reassigned him in St. Louis (just on the other side of the Mississippi river from where we lived in Illinois), and he did not have to return. I tell you all this because of the comment my uncle made at my grandfather's funeral. It was kind of a light bulb moment for all of us.
"If Kayren's arm hadn't been paralyzed, you wouldn't have been here for Grandpa's funeral."
Now I don't think God struck me or anything, but I think he waited to heal me.
I was close to my grandpa, too. My mother and I lived with my grandparent's until I was almost three (my father divorced my mother immediately upon returning from Viet Nam). I also inherited his knack for accounting and being really particular about it, his enjoyment of stamp collecting, and his love of ice cream. I would travel with my grandparent's in the summer to visit my great-grandparents about three hours away in Monett, Missouri, and one night while we were there my grandpa and I would walk up to the Dairy Queen a few streets over and up, get a treat, and eat it as we walked back to the house.
My grandpa lived in the middle of the dust bowl in Kansas, through the Depression, and signed up for the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps). He ended up over in the Northwest part of the United States. Here he is at Ruffneck Peak, El. 9419, Ft. Stanley, Idaho, Aug. 22, 1936.
The man labeled all his pictures, with details. If it weren't for him, our family would not have the photos it does. Here are some more pictures from when he was with the CCC.
There are a few pictures of his friends with a fish along with this one, and it looks an awful lot like the same fish. I don't really know, but I'm suspicious. It's something like a 13 lb. salmon. I've already put the picture away so I can't read those details on the back again and didn't write them down the first time.
When his time was up he was to be sent back to Kansas where they originally picked him up on the train, but he had someone give him a fake letter that he had a job in San Francisco, because he wanted to go to California. He got there, but he wasn't able to get a job, and his youngest brother Claude worked it out so that he could come back to Kansas, work at the diner where he did, and go to school at Parsons Business College. Grandpa had just enough money for a share-the-ride program to get back, and Parsons Business College is where he met my Grandma.
My grandma always told me two things that other people told her: that she shouldn't marry Grandpa because he was too short, and that she shouldn't marry Grandpa because it would make him more likely to be drafted.
Well, he was drafted, but I don't know that it had anything to do with being married.
Grandma was expecting my mom when Grandpa left for Europe. Once she had my mom, he got a telegram, but all it said was that mom and baby were fine. It didn't tell him if he had a son or a daughter. It was a week or two before he was able to find out. When you watch 'Saving Private Ryan' you see how it was probably difficult for notice to get around.
When I was growing up Grandma always ironed Grandpa's underwear and white undershirts. I asked her once why she did it. She told me that she always said that if Grandpa came home from the war, that she would always iron his underwear and undershirts. Good thing she didn't use starch, I guess.
While Grandpa was over in Europe, he 'ran into' his brother-in-law, my Grandma's brother Bill. Here they are in Obermoos, Austria.
When Grandpa came back from the war, he went to work for the Corps of Engineers in Mountain Home, Arkansas, that was responsible for building both of the dams. He worked for them until he retired, and then he stayed busy being the Financial Secretary at church. He'd been doing it anyway in his non-work hours, but he couldn't just sit at home once he retired.
When my grandparents were getting ready to go on a European tour tracing the route Grandpa's unit took in WWII (along with the rest of his group), the church took up donations for a money tree. I still remember to this day the story he told in church that night when they presented the tree. He had recently been counting money and envelopes, and he was a meticulous man, but he was $50 short. He couldn't find it anywhere, and this was well before the days of the counting committees you see now. Well, he put in his own money to make up the difference, but he didn't tell anyone, not even Grandma. The money tree had well more than $50 on it.
Grandpa loved the Razorbacks. He got us season tickets to the football games in Fayetteville one year for Christmas when we lived close enough to go with him. Here are Hubby and Grandpa back in the late 80's/early 90's.
I remember whenever I traveled with my Grandpa anywhere that we always had to stop at the post office. If it was a new place we were traveling, we would 'look for the flag.' Obviously that works in small towns the best, but all post offices fly the U.S. flag, and everyone doesn't, so it's an easy marker.
Because if you're not a stamp collector you probably don't know that if you live somewhere different you might have different plate numbers that print on your stamps, or on your coils, or on your booklets. All kinds of stuff that can be different just because it's in a different place, and sometimes Grandpa would drive a few towns over just to check for different numbers. Sometimes they'd let him look without buying if they were the same.
So when they built a new post office in my home town, guess who got to be the very first person to make a purchase? Yep, Grandpa. 85 years old and wearing a Looney Tunes tie.
On the off chance this caption can't be read once I post, it says, "Everett Wheeler, an 85-year-old Mountain Home stamp collector who's been collecting for 53 years, was the first person to buy stamps at the new Mountain Home Post Office Monday morning."
Pretty cool, huh?
Well, because you are probably tired of me going on and on about my Grandpa, I guess I can wrap this up. I'm obviously a little partial to my Grandpa, but I truly think this generation was the greatest, just like Tom Brokaw's book says.
Oh, Caboose's middle name is Everett after my grandfather. This is a picture of my grandpa in December, 2001,
and here is Caboose at that same time climbing up in Grandpa's chair.
Apparently he was unknowingly preparing for the day when Chatty's children will be taking care of him so he doesn't have to go to the nursing home, not planning to marry and have his own children and all.
I'm a believer in Christ, a wife for 26 years, and a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom of four great kids, including twin daughters who are 18, and two sons who are 15 and 12. I was officially diagnosed with breast cancer on May 5, 2011. We are a retired military family finding our way in the civilian world. I have a passion for organization, although my family and friends would call it an obsession. I'm an accountant by trade, but would love to be a professional organizer someday. This is a little bit of our journey through life, where we keep faraway family and friends updated, and meet some really neat people along the way. Thanks for dropping by!
This will be an easy week since I don't have to plan for Friday or Saturday (we're going to Ohio and birding, and I'll have to let you know exactly how that goes) and then Sunday is Mother's Day, so we'll eat out. And of course I don't want to leave leftovers in the refrigerator when I leave town, so Wednesday and Thursday are going to be simple days, too. I love this week!
After I moved out all the baseball cards, except for two vaults I left on the top shelf, I was able to clean out and organize the rest of my closet. I did not empty the closet out like The Organizing Junkie suggested, but remember I had lived here less than six months!
In the picture above, t
With their momma...
And the irony of this sign is not lost on me, having seen it completely iced over just a few months ago.
Here's the proud daddy keeping watch.
gosling: noun
and here is what they look like being worn, on the forehead and on the arm.
There were rules and such about wearing them, and I'm also curious enough to find it interesting to read about that stuff. If you are, you can just google phylacteries.
The man labeled all his pictures, with details. If it weren't for him, our family would not have the photos it does. Here are some more pictures from when he was with the CCC.
There are a few pictures of his friends with a fish along with this one, and it looks an awful lot like the same fish. I don't really know, but I'm suspicious. It's something like a 13 lb. salmon. I've already put the picture away so I can't read those details on the back again and didn't write them down the first time.
My grandma always told me two things that other people told her: that she shouldn't marry Grandpa because he was too short, and that she shouldn't marry Grandpa because it would make him more likely to be drafted.
Well, he was drafted, but I don't know that it had anything to do with being married.
Grandma was expecting my mom when Grandpa left for Europe. Once she had my mom, he got a telegram, but all it said was that mom and baby were fine. It didn't tell him if he had a son or a daughter. It was a week or two before he was able to find out. When you watch 'Saving Private Ryan' you see how it was probably difficult for notice to get around.
When Grandpa came back from the war, he went to work for the Corps of Engineers in Mountain Home, Arkansas, that was responsible for building both of the dams. He worked for them until he retired, and then he stayed busy being the Financial Secretary at church. He'd been doing it anyway in his non-work hours, but he couldn't just sit at home once he retired.
Grandpa loved the Razorbacks. He got us season tickets to the football games in Fayetteville one year for Christmas when we lived close enough to go with him. Here are Hubby and Grandpa back in the late 80's/early 90's.
I remember whenever I traveled with my Grandpa anywhere that we always had to stop at the post office. If it was a new place we were traveling, we would 'look for the flag.' Obviously that works in small towns the best, but all post offices fly the U.S. flag, and everyone doesn't, so it's an easy marker.
On the off chance this caption can't be read once I post, it says, "Everett Wheeler, an 85-year-old Mountain Home stamp collector who's been collecting for 53 years, was the first person to buy stamps at the new Mountain Home Post Office Monday morning."
and here is Caboose at that same time climbing up in Grandpa's chair.
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